


Hook, Line and Sinker

by Tawabids



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Erik is a grumpy fisherman, Homophobia, I don't think the violence is actually too bad but better safe than sorry, M/M, Threats of torture, cuddling for warmth, potentially dub-con because of amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-14 20:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the kinkmeme prompt, "Erik is a grumpy fisherman who lives in a cosy cottage near the beach and Charles is the man he finds in his net one day with a bump on his head and a too cheerful demeanour."</p><p>And Charles is getting hunted by evil government agents, but all that is just an excuse to ensure Erik fishes Charles out of the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt is [here at X-Men First Kink](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/3278.html?thread=3594702#t3594702).

The smell of oil and rotting wood was thick in the air as Erik manoeuvred _Anya_ out of the dock. Her hull swayed, light and a little unpredictable after being emptied of the catch Erik had just offloaded at the fishing plant. He pulled off his glove and slid a hand along the nearest railing, steadying the metal's trajectory until they were heading on a straight course for the mouth of the bay.

One of the other fishermen who moored his boat at the dock hailed Erik from the end of the jetty. "Not going out again, are you, Lehnsherr?"

"The weather's good for it, Sam," Erik called back, tipping a two-finger salute to the grizzled old man. He felt _Anya_ heave a little at the loss of his directing touch, but the engine was puttering happily and the boat had enough momentum to keep in line.

"How do you do it?" Sam yelled through a gap-toothed grin. _Anya_ was past the end of the jetty now, and would soon leave it behind. "Always work solo? How do you do it?"

"I like the quiet," Erik yelled in return. He wasn't sure if Sam could hear him, though the old man was raising his arm in farewell. He knew that that wasn't what the question had meant. All the other workers on the dock asked the same thing - usually not to his face. It should take at least three men to do his job; drive the boat, work the pulleys and the nets, haul around a fresh catch, fill the cold bins, manage the engine... yet Erik was always alone, and still brought in just as much as any of the other fishing boats in the town. But they weren't the superstitious sort round here, so they put it down to strength and fortitude rather than anything more remarkable.

Between that and Erik's taciturn attitude, they mostly left him alone. He liked that. He hadn't lied to Sam - he liked the quiet out on the ocean. He liked his little two-room, stone and plaster cottage on the arse-end of the peninsula where even the tourists didn't come hiking. He liked the roar of the wind at night, drowning out his memories. People were nothing but trouble. He was done with people. Especially crowds of people, any one of which might spot his face and think, "Haven't I seen him before? On the telly, in the papers? Doesn't he look like that sketch of the fellow who tortured the Swiss banker, who killed all those men in Argentina, who's wanted in four countries for seven other murders?" 

Yes, he liked the quiet and the solitude of the sea. 

The water was choppy by the time he got out into the deep, though it had been calm as a glass of water when he'd driven _Anya_ out here at 5am this morning. The weather report had told boats to watch for a ridge of low pressure coming up the coast, but it wasn't due until tonight, long after Erik planned to be back in dock. He kept one eye on the barometer anyway.

He had let the nets down and was leaning on the rail smoking a cigarette when something floated across his peripheral vision. He pinched the butt between his lips and leaned over, thinking it was a dolphin surfacing. He was surprised to see a pale piece of fibreglass, which by its ragged edges hadn't been in the water for long - it was not some rubbish that had floated across the whole pacific, but something that had broken off a boat recently. As he looked further towards the bow, he saw a larger piece of jagged debris, with a dark blue stripe painted across it. There were bits of rubber, too, and what looked like part of a cabin seat. Erik frowned, flicking his cigarette into the water. He headed up to the helm and picked up the radio, tuning it into the emergency frequency.

"This is the _Anya_ ," he gave his coordinates, "Is there a vessel in distress out there? Over," he waited a good thirty seconds before repeating his message, and then once more. There was no answer. If there had been an accident, either the crew hadn't managed to bring their radio onto the lifeboat or they hadn't made it to the lifeboat at all. Either way, the coastguard wouldn't come out until a boat failed to arrive on schedule. Erik chewed on the inside of his cheek, looking out at the horizon. He didn't like the look of those clouds. It was time to cut today’s haul short.

He thumped back down onto the deck and began to wind the nets up. The metal pulley turned easily under his hands, but he was surprised to feel a bit of weight behind it. He hadn't been out here long enough to fill the nets, but he'd certainly caught something.

As the last of the nets' folds lifted out of the water, Erik's jaw dropped. He let go of the pulley in surprise, and the net jerked as the ratchet caught it and held it hanging. Inside the thick, criss-crossing ropes was the pale, unmistakeable shape of a human body. For a moment Erik didn't know what to do, scrambling to lean over the gunwale and pull at the net, but it was too heavy to drag in by hand. He rushed back to the pulley and wound it the rest of the way in, summoning the stem around to swing the nets over the deck. He released them and the ropes, fish and body slithered onto the wood.

 _Anya_ was beginning to rock as the waves from the oncoming storm grew more brutal. Erik scrambled across the deck to kneel by the nets. His stomach contracted as he realised that the person inside had to be a corpse. He fumbled anxiously at the ropes, trying to untangle the body - naked and male, he noted, but little else - and when the net wouldn't open, he grabbed htheis knife from his belt and hacked at the salt-stiffened fabric until it fell away.

The man was young, far too young to be dead in a cold ocean. The body looked surprisingly whole, however. His limbs weren’t swollen, nor his abdomen bloated - he couldn't have been in the water more than a few hours. Poor kid. Maybe if he'd held on a little longer, he would be getting rescued right now. Erik pushed the strands of dark hair off the dead man's face. 

The man was breathing.

"Mein gott!" Erik leapt to his feet, and then crouched over again and put his ear to the man's mouth. Yes, he was breathing, he was alive. Erik had to steady himself as the deck rolled over a particularly large wave. The man's arm flopped against the nets but his eyes remained closed. Erik shoved his knife back into its sheath, slid his arms under the man's back and knees and lifted him up, staggering down into the tiny cabin. He laid the body on the floor and hurried to unlatch one of the cupboards to fetch a towel and a blanket. He dried the man as quickly as he could and then wrapped him up tightly and put a spare lifejacket under his head. There was no point lying him on one of the benches, as he’d just fall off; _Anya_ was heaving back and forth crazily now, and rain was pattering at the windows. It was time to get off the ocean, and fast.

The weather was moving much swifter than the reports had predicted. Erik knew it would be dangerous to make it back to port. The cove where his little cottage sat was much closer. But he had neither a phone nor a car – there would be no way to get the half-drowned man to the hospital. He swore colourfully as he navigated _Anya_ back towards the land, but finally made the call to head for home. If the man was breathing, he probably just needed warmth and fresh water for now. 

He anchored _Anya_ in the cove and rowed to shore, pulling the dinghy and the man right up the beach almost into the dunes, hopefully away from the worst surges the storm could muster. He had wrapped a second blanket and zipped a spare overcoat over the body, but it was slow work carrying the man up the long path to the cottage. They were both sodden from rain by the time Erik managed to shoulder through the doorway.

Once the half-drowned man was lying on the couch in front of the wood stove, Erik’s first priority was dry blankets, and only then did he set about starting up the generator and getting the fire going. Soon the air inside the main room was warm enough that he stripped off his wet jacket. He found two hot water bottles in the cupboard, boiled a pot and filled both bottles, wrapped them each in spare clothes before finally tucking them under the blankets. The stranger’s skin was still cold to the touch. 

Erik found he was shaking. He changed his clothes and heated up a cup of tea, and stood over the couch looking down at his guest. There was a little colour in the stranger’s cheeks now, and his breath was stronger. Erik sat and watched his lips moving in his sleep, marvelling that he’d survived at all. He didn’t stop staring until the teacup in his hands was empty. The storm outside was raging against the shutters and the rain clattered like a volley of gunshots against the roof. Erik flinched, and busied himself with reheating the leftover chowder from the night before.

When he next went to check on his visitor, he almost jumped in surprise. Two bright eyes were watching him over the curve of the blanket, which the stranger had pulled up to his chin. Erik knelt on the rug and put the back of his hand to man’s forehead. His temperature was up from the near-death chill of before.

“I’m Erik,” he said. “You were in the water. What happened? What ship were you on?”

“Was I on a ship?” the man asked. “That’s odd,” he wiped at his eyes, which were red and watering freely from the long exposure to salt water. 

Erik raised an eyebrow. “Unless you fell out of an aeroplane.”

“A distinct possibility,” the man croaked. 

“I’ll get you some water,” Erik hurried to the sink and filled a glass, bringing it back to the man and helping him sit up a little.

The man downed it in three gulps, and Erik refilled the glass twice before his thirst was slated. The man wiped his mouth and cleared his throat. “I don’t seem to be wearing any clothes.”

“Hang on,” Erik left him again and went into his bedroom, rifling through his drawers until he found a thick jersey and a pair of warm trousers. When he came back into the room he gaped. The man was standing in front of the stove, hands outstretched to catch the heat coming off it. He had not brought his blankets with him, and his naked body was a dark, angled silhouette against the stove window. He turned to look at Erik, smiling without a shred of modesty.

“I, er, here,” Erik kept his eyes averted as he held out the clothes. “You’re shivering, for goodness’ sake. Stay under the blankets.”

“I am? Of course I am. My head’s a bit wobbly,” out of the corner of Erik’s eye, he saw the man dress slowly, wincing with each movement. His limbs would be aching after staying that long in the cold water. He curled up on the couch once again, pulling the blankets over his legs.

Erik brought him a bowl of chowder and sat on the floor while they both ate, reluctant to intrude on the stranger’s space. “The storm should be gone by tomorrow afternoon,” Erik explained. “I couldn’t get back to port, and the radio signals are hopeless in this weather, but the coastguard will be out looking for your vessel. Once it’s clear, I’ll radio back to say you’re safe and they’ll send someone to get you,” he paused. He hadn’t spoken this much to another human being for days. “You haven’t told me your name.”

“It’s Charles,” said the man at once, as if to get it out of the way.

“What were you doing out there, Charles?” Erik asked carefully. “On holiday?”

Charles put the bowl to his lips and drank the last of the chowder sauce, then sat licking his lips for several long seconds. Erik thought morosely, _He was with his family. He knows they could be dead._

“No, no I don’t think I was with my family,” Charles said, as if he had read Erik’s thoughts. He opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. “I don’t remember. I think I was… I don’t remember,” he finished.

“Where are you from?” Erik frowned.

“I’m not sure.”

“Well… what _are_ you sure about?”

Charles looked at him for a while, and Erik could tell he was thinking hard. Finally he glanced around at the Spartan cottage, decorated with nothing brighter than a mustard-yellow afghan draped over an armchair. Its plain white walls displayed only one picture: a cheap watercolour of the Cologne Cathedral that Erik had picked up in a second-hand store. 

Charles said at last, “I’m sure I like it here. I’m very glad I woke up here, my friend. I hope I’m not a bother.”

Erik looked down at the dregs of his meal. “Of course not.”

He gave Charles his bed and most of the blankets in the cottage, and took the couch for himself. He fell asleep watching the last embers in the stove beginning to die, and woke up in the pitch black. The air was cooling and the storm was still battering outside, but he was used to that. What had woken him?

Erik rolled over and froze as he heard a noise. It sounded like a voice. Was someone in the house? How was the possible?

He realised with a silent groan that of course, he had a guest. He listened, and heard the faint cry once more. Rubbing his eyes, he got up and stumbled to the bedroom with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He knocked on the door, and a moment later thought he heard an answer.

He stuck his head into the bedroom. “Are you okay?”

He heard Charles moving in the darkness, and a moment later there was the click of the light switch and the bare bulb flooded the room with light. Erik blinked. 

“I think it was a bad dream,” Charles said apologetically. His teeth were rattling.

“You’re shivering again.”

“I’m freezing.”

“You’re probably still recovering from mild hypothermia. I can refill the hot water bottles—”

“It’s not enough,” Charles cut him off.

“Well, it’s all I’ve got, unless you want me to get into bed with you,” said Erik.

“Yes please.”

Erik stared at him. Charles looked completely serious. “Are you sure?” Erik’s brows tightened.

“Being puritanical is not worth freezing over,” Charles replied.

Erik sighed. The bed did look considerably more comfortable than the couch. He climbed in under the blankets and slid down beside Charles, who immediately shuffled closer until they were lying side-by-side, pressed together at the shoulders and hips. Erik felt a flush begin to rise up his neck and resolutely ignored it. He reached over to switch the light off, glancing at Charles, who already had his eyes closed, his shivering beginning to subside already.

“What’s that?” Erik asked, his hand hovering over the switch.

“What’s what?” Charles glanced at him. Their faces were inches apart, and Erik reached over and gently turned Charles’ head so he could see the side of his neck properly.

“There’s marks. Little red spots. Like little bites.”

“Oh,” Charles shrugged. “I except I got nibbled a bit when I was in the water.”

“I suppose,” Erik mused. He flicked the light off and lay still, feeling awkward and tense. He listened to Charles’ breathing steady as his guest fell asleep. Erik, who didn’t even remember the last time he had shared a bed with anybody, took longer to relax. It was only as his mind was finally beginning to drift that he thought, _not like bites. They looked like needle punctures._ But moments later he was asleep, and would not remember the thought come morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Erik dreamed of a cold metal cage he couldn't bend, of nausea and black holes in the centre of the galaxy. Erik dreamed of a voice, familiar and terrifyingly callous, hissing, _"I'm going to kill you all. All of you, for what you did to her."_ Erik dreamed of fire and burning men, of screams and a sudden cold world, of losing his breath in bubbles that floated away from him like planets drawn into the engorged embrace of the sun. Erik dreamed of calling, calling, calling for help without making a sound, of the touch of another's mind, a softer flame, a collapsed star that still glowed quietly on the edge of the universe. Erik dreamed of drawing the small sun into his orbit, reaching a halo of gravity out to dig its hooks into the stranger's mind, and clung to consciousness as he felt the stranger turn inexorably towards him--

Erik awoke and lay still and listening. A faint, silvery dawn crept through a gap in the curtains, and the rain on the roof was now only a faint haze of noise. The storm had passed faster than he'd expected, as fast as it had arrived. He became aware of Charles twitching in his sleep, the sleeve of the borrowed wool jersey rubbing rough and itchy against Erik. Carefully, trying not to let too much heat out of the bed, he swung his feet onto the floor and sat for a moment, picking the sleep out of his eyes. His back ached from trying not to move all night and his heart was racing in the aftermath of the dream. He pulled on his trousers and a thick pair of socks and headed into the other room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

While porridge was brewing on the stove, he wound up the wireless transmitter and called the coastguard. The signal was clear despite the last of the storm buffeting itself out on the hills above, and Erik gave his name and the coordinates where he'd found Charles the day before.

"He's a survivor of the boat that went down yesterday," Erik explained. "Can you tell me if anyone else made it?"

"What boat?" the operator asked. "Are you reporting an accident?"

"Hasn't anything been reported missing? I'd say from the wreckage it was a leisure craft, maybe the size of a schooner given how deep I found him."

"Nothing's been reported missing, and we only had a couple of distress calls in yesterday's weather. They're all resolved. What has the man said?"

"He doesn't know much. I think he has a head injury."

"Could be a swimmer. Bad rips yesterday."

Erik tapped the handset against his chin, his mind churning. A swimmer that far out? With no wetsuit? Treading water in seas that cold? He'd have to be super-human.

"Better bring him into the hospital anyway, Lehnsherr. We'll let you know if we hear anything."

"Roger that. Over," Erik grunted.

He hung the handset up on the radio and turned to get up. Charles was standing in the doorway of the bedroom. His eyes were wide. “Did you hear anything? About me?”

Erik shook his head. “No one’s reported you missing.”

“Ah,” Charles swayed his weight from one foot to the other, and then smiled broadly. “That’s good, isn’t it? That means no one’s suffering on my behalf,” he shuffled across the room and peered into the pot. “May I…?”

“Help yourself,” Erik shrugged.

“If I am on holiday, I’m telling you,” Charles stole a spoonful of porridge straight out of the pot, blew on it quickly, “this is my favourite holiday. Absolutely nothing to worry about. No job to go back to, no stressing over accommodation, no nagging relatives,” he stuffed the cooled spoonful into his mouth, “and the best breakfast I’ve ever tasted.”

“If you can’t remember past yesterday, that’s not saying much,” Erik replied, getting up to follow Charles’ example. “Anyway, we’ll leave for town in about an hour.”

Charles, halfway through ladling himself a bowl of porridge, looked up at him. The porridge missed the bowl and boiling oats splattered down the side of his hand, and he gave a hiss of pain. There was a loud crack as he dropped the bowl and it hit the edge of the pot, landed on the tiled floor and shattered, sending its contents flying in all directions.

Charles released a bizarrely British series of curses – Erik thought he heard “fucking bint crumpets!” in there somewhere – and fell to his knees, trying to scoop the bowl and the oaty mess up with his hands, which resulted only in burning himself further.

“Charles, it’s fine,” Erik knelt and grabbed his arm.

Charles raised his head with a snap and looked into Erik’s eyes. And for just a second – less than a second, half of a split-second – Erik saw _rage betrayal rage inferno black hole gravity fear guilt_ and it hurt _it hurt G-d_ -

“Charles!” Erik’s voice broke the moment, and the shards of pain dissipated like smoke.

“I’m sorry-” Charles held up the largest piece of the broken bowl. He looked demure and painfully apologetic. It was as if he had no idea what had just transgressed. Erik gaped at him, and Charles’ brows contracted. “I’ll buy you a new one as soon as I find out what bank I’m with?”

“Forget it, I’ll call it a gift. You need to put that under cold water,” Erik pulled him to his feet and twisted the faucet. The pipes glugged and spluttered and cold water from the tank finally gushed freely. Charles held his reddening hand under the flow, the traces of porridge sliding off into the sink.

 

\---

Although he seemed reluctant to leave the cottage, once they were outside Charles became unreasonably excited about going back on the boat. Barefoot on the stony beach, he hurried down to the water and stood staring out at _Anya_ with a blissful grin on his face, heedless of the faint drizzle dribbling under the collar of his borrowed rain jacket. Erik arrived at his side, hauling the dinghy, and Charles rushed up to help - or at least, hover annoyingly in Erik's way. Once they were on the water he sat in the aft facing Erik, leaning over to look into the clouded waves. Though they didn't talk, the silence wasn't awkward, and every now and then Charles seemed to remember Erik was there and beam at him. 

Erik felt like he should have been embarrassed, but he wasn't. He couldn't help thinking of days long gone, after the war, when he'd been young and trying to outrun his anger instead of embracing it. He'd stumbled from job to job and gone looking for affection anywhere it could be found back then. There had been Rosamund, Georgette, and also Karl and Josef, and others whose names he didn't remember or never knew. He'd fallen fast (and fallen hard) for every pretty face that flashed him a wink. He thought he'd grown out of all that, but quite suddenly he was dwelling on how safe things had always felt in someone else's bed. 

He needed to keep his mind away from that thought. Charles was vulnerable and trusting, and would most likely find Erik's sexual deviation disgusting. And there had been that moment over the broken porridge bowl, that strange flash of _black hole hate fear_ , when Erik had felt like the vulnerable one...

He shook his head as the bow bumped against _Anya's_ side. 

They weren't far out of the cove before Charles' seafaring delight soured. He started off just looking a little grey and sitting down on the steps, but soon enough was heaving his breakfast over the side. Erik made him put on a life jacket. He trailed his hand along the metal as he went, keeping half his attention on _Anya’s_ course.

"Perhaps you were having a party yesterday and went overboard," he suggested. "Maybe that's why your boat hasn't reported you missing. They're all sleeping in with a hangover."

"That might explain where my clothes went-” Charles broke off his sentence to empty the bile and the last of the porridge out of his stomach once more. He hung over the railing, his arms resting limp on either side of him. Erik stared at the back of his head, listening to Charles spit. Before he could think twice about what he was doing, had reached out and massaged the back of Charles' neck, just between the dark down at the edge of his hairline and the hem of the scratchy wool jersey. 

Charles didn't move or speak as Erik rubbed his fingers into the bottom of his hair and squeezed the tense muscles at the base of his skull. He felt Charles relax under his hand, and finally he turned his head a little to glance up at Erik. "Thank you, that's helping."

"I know," Erik said. 

\---

“Alright, keep your eyes on the tip of my finger. Can you follow it? Does your head hurt when you do that?”

“No.”

“Good,” the doctor dropped his hand. “And you can’t find an actual wound on your head anywhere? No palpable bruising?”

“Nope.”

“Hmmm,” the doctor scratched his bristly chin. He was on the wrong side of middle-aged and smoked two cigarettes between every appointment. In the stagnant little port, most of the complaints he dealt with were joint problems and heart palpitations. Mysterious memory loss, Erik could see, was quite out of his league. “Beyond the nausea and amnesia, you’re not showing any signs of concussion, so my guess is it’s psychological.”

“What’s that mean?” Erik growled from where he was leaning next to the closed door of the doctor’s office. He’d got grease from his hand onto the lavender wallpaper, and surreptitiously tried to wipe it off with his elbow. 

“Some people theorise that after a traumatic event, the mind can just,” the doctor shrugged, “withdraw from the memory completely. To protect itself.”

“Right,” Erik raised his eyebrows. 

“If you start getting headaches or vision disturbances, come back as soon as you can. Otherwise, you’ll probably be back to normal in a few days.”

“That’s great,” Charles said, smiling at Erik. “In a few days you can meet the real Charles, my friend. I bet I’m a tosser.”

“Well,” Erik folded his arms and gave him a wry smile, “you’re welcome to hang around the cottage until then, but not a minute longer.”

Erik paid for the appointment in cash, despite Charles’ protests. He pointed out that Charles did not even own the clothes on his back, and promised that he honestly had nothing better to spend the money on. As they headed back into the grimy street, the air thick with the smell of salt and the brewery up the road, Erik peeled another handful of notes out of his wallet and handed them to Charles.

“Go get yourself some clothes,” he said, tapping out a cigarette and pinning it between his lips. He mumbled out of the corner of his mouth, “since you’ve folded the legs of my trousers up three times. There’s shops that way, I’ll meet you at the square down there in an hour.”

He needed to go and talk to the fishing plant manager to explain why he wouldn’t be bringing anything in today. _But why is your net full of holes, Mr Lehnsherr?_ Because I caught a naked man in it yesterday. _But why does that stop you fishing?_ Look, I’m not working today, deal with it. 

He expected Charles to ask him where he was going, but his friend tucked the money in his pocket – well, technically Erik’s pocket – and headed off with a quick wave, bare feet slapping on the tarmac. 

Explanations eventually took slightly more than an hour, and Erik resisted the urge to jog back to the square where Charles would be waiting. When he reached it, he drew back in shock to see Charles standing beside a policeman and a couple who were far too well dressed to be local; a woman in a sharp-cut pantsuit and a bespectacled man scribbling in a notebook, which he tucked away as Erik approached. Erik tried to tone down the impression he was giving of a bull making a beeline for a red flag.

“Erik!” Charles said brightly. The policeman frowned, but Charles grabbed Erik and pulled him into the cluster. He had a canvas bag of clothes looped over his elbow and was now sporting fitted denim jeans and a dark blue cardigan that was considerably tighter than what he had been wearing before. “This is the man who rescued me, Agent Levene. He can probably tell you more than I can.”

“Agent?” Erik asked.

The suited man who had hidden the notebook held out his hand, and Erik ground it between his fingers in what he hoped could be mistaken for a handshake. “This is my partner, Agent MacTaggert. We’re with the CIA.”

“Are you,” Erik gritted. His brain was muttering, _run or kill them, run or kill them, any second now they’re going to ask about Argentina, run or kill them NOW_. “What brings you all the way out here, agents?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified, sir, but it’s nothing you need to worry about,” Agent MacTaggert tucked her thumbs into her belt loops. “Charles here says you came across the wreckage of a schooner yesterday. Could you give us some details?”

The animalistic muttering in Erik’s brain began to quiet a little. “I wouldn’t say wreckage. A couple of scraps of hull,” he said, forcing a note of casual interest into his voice.

“Anything written on it?”

“Not that I saw. Just a blue stripe,” Erik said, his brows pinched together. The Agent glanced at his colleague and then pulled out his notebook and wrote this down, with frustrating slowness. “Are you looking for Charles’ boat?”

“We’re pretty sure Charles isn’t related to our investigation,” Levene said blankly. 

“Why not?” Erik frowned, glancing between them. 

Agent Levene gave a low laugh, “Does he strike you as a soviet spy?”

Erik and MacTaggert both gave their respective companions very critical looks. Charles smiled benignly and Levene hissed, “Come on, that’s what they’re all going to think anyway.”

“I think we’re done here,” MacTaggert flashed Erik and Charles an unconvincing smile. “Thanks for your help.”

The two agents retreated, bickering quietly. Erik put his hand on Charles’ shoulder and frowned at the constable, whom he knew as somebody’s brother but not by name. “What was that about?”

“They didn’t say much,” the policeman shrugged, “but somebody as the pub was talking about George Manders, who scans the military frequencies, you know? Apparently he was saying that one of our subs was broadcasting a distress call yesterday morning. Not for them, but because they’d hit some boat with a missile.”

Erik’s hand tightened on Charles’ shoulder. “They sure about that?”

“Oh, sure they’re sure,” the policeman nodded. Like most of the residents of the town, spreading gossip and rumours was the most thrilling part of his day. “But thing is, no boats are reported missing, see? And Manders was saying – this was what he said, see, but maybe he needs his hearing aid tuned – he was saying the sub crew reported the sunk vessel was a commie spy boat. That’s what they said, right? But when they got asked how they knew, they couldn’t answer. They just said they knew. Like, they just _felt it in their bones_.”

Erik felt Charles’ weight shift under his hand. He squeezed it gently. “You wanna stay in town a bit longer, Charles?”

Charles shook his head, and when he spoke, he sounded strained. “No, let’s head back to the cottage, please. If you don’t mind.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains sex, and I've added a dub-con tag because I think sex with someone with memory loss and a potential head injury is a bit dub-con, especially in a situation where they have nowhere else to go and no one to turn to, but I actually intend the sex to come off and entirely and mutually consensual. Just making sure there are warnings for all likely triggers!

Erik spent the rest afternoon weeding the small garden out the back of the cottage and repairing the windbreak that protected it. Charles went exploring along the edge of the cove, and Erik couldn't help keeping half an eye on the tiny figure in the blue cardigan clambering over the rocks. At one point, he was looked down for what must have been less than a minute, and Charles had disappeared. Erik heart hammered in his chest. He got to his feet, straining his eyes to spot Charles crouched down to look at something, or worse, bobbing helplessly in the churning surf. Before he'd panicked himself too much, however, Charles' small shape appeared on the slope of the promontory. He had climbed up the far side and was walking along the headland towards the old farm road, which gave the only access to the cove.

Erik rubbed the bridge of his nose. What the hell was happening to him? He didn't remember the last time he'd been concerned - really concerned - about someone else's welfare. This whole business was dangerous; the CIA could be involved, and Russian spyboats that may or may not be the product of pressure-induced dementia. Was that the innocent explanation - that Charles was just a solo yaughtie who'd been hit by a misfired torpedo, and the submarine crew were covering their mistake by claiming the attack was for national security? But then, how had he ended up in Erik's net with no clothes? And why hadn't anyone noticed he was missing? And that moment over the spilled porridge, that moment when Erik had known that there was something dark, something cosmically strange about Charles. He'd known it.

He'd known it in his _bones._

\---

Erik cooked again that night, bait fritters and baked potatoes with a side of spinach and leeks from the garden. In the tiny house, Charles sat draped over the arm of the ragged couch, talking endlessly. It was strange that a man with amnesia could find so much to talk about, but Charles seemed determined to verbally investigate every memory. He talked about books he'd read and they compared notes on _Ulysses_ and _Madame Bovary_. He remembered swimming in a shallow river, and traced a scar on his hand that he was sure he'd got falling off a bike on a gravel path. He talked about the flashes he had of people's faces - a cold woman with a martini glass in her hand, a blonde girl with a lively smile who Charles remembered saying goodbye to at a pair of wrought-iron gates. "She feels far away," he said. "I think maybe I left her in England, some time ago. I'm not sure," he pursed his lips, his gaze roaming. "Do you have any family?" he asked suddenly.

Erik shook his head, keeping his eyes on the frying pan. "My parents are dead."

"Have you ever married?"

Again, Erik shook his head. Charles didn't pursue that line of questioning any further. Erik didn't feel interrogated, though. Charles was curious, desperate for information to fill the void in his memories, and never judgmental. He didn't seem to have a speck of maliciousness in him. Talking to him was... worryingly easy. Erik needed to watch what he said. There was no doubt it would destroy his new friendship if the man knew what he'd done. 

But he let his guard down as the evening wore on. Erik found a chess set buried at the bottom of his cupboard and they played a single game; Charles, though he knew the rules, said he felt as if he hadn't played in years. Erik beat him easily, despite trying to let Charles gain the upper hand.

"You're good at everything!" Charles crowed, rocking back on the couch. "Chess, cooking, sailing a fishing boat all by yourself..."

"That's last one's not hard, it just takes practice," Erik said quickly, and then cursed colourfully inside his head. Could he sound more suspicious? Dammit, dammit, this was the problem with people, this was why he needed to stay away from people...

Charles gave him a sympathetic smile and reaching across the chessboard that rested between them on the couch. His fingers brushed across the back of Erik's hand, and when Erik didn't flinch (he was frozen shock still, his heart thudding) took Erik's sweating hand between both of his own.

"You're not alone," he said. "I promise you."

Erik wanted to speak, wanted to ask, _do you mean what I think you mean?_ , but even intelligible thoughts had escaped him. He felt hulled out, thrown up by the sea on a stony beach in some foreign land, bleached and smoothed by the sun and the ocean. And the man in front of him, the unknown, untethered man before him, was looking right through his eyes into the part of him that was just Erik, all Erik, Charles was looking at him like he _knew_. And suddenly Erik saw, in a way he'd somehow missed before, that Charles was fucking beautiful, pristine, like clear water, like a new fishhook. And what did it matter because in a few days his memory would be back and he'd leave and they would never collide again so right now he might as well--

Erik leaned in kissed him, his hands and Charles' hands still clasped on the couch between them. 

Charles jerked away like he'd been slapped. The blood rushed to his face and his mouth hung open, and Erik drew back, mumbling, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I thought you--" _oh G-d no dammit stupid idiot fool ruined it no--_

"No, I meant, what I meant was, I..." Charles blathered, growing pinker by the second, and Erik wanted to look away, or get up and go outside, hide until Charles had bolted himself inside the bedroom and they could both sleep fitfully for the rest of the night in separate rooms, both of them hating Erik for his indiscretion. And then the hands still holding his tightened, and Charles muttered, "Sod it," and lunged across the couch, overturning the chessboard and pressing his lips to Erik's. 

Erik's mind turned white gold like heated steel, and he pulled Charles into him, body to body. For a long while - a beautiful, long stretch of time like a cool, tree-shaded path on a sunny day - they just stayed pressed and kissing. Charles smelled of brine and sweat, he smelled of wood smoke and unwashed hair. His chin was beginning to bristle after at least two days without shaving, and Erik felt his skin being rubbed raw by it. And then, like a cocaine rush to his brain, kissing was suddenly not enough. Some sensible part of him wagged its finger and said, _softly, softly now_. He drew back, cupping his hands around Charles' face. "Have you ever... have you done this before?"

"I don't remember, you twit!" Charles said, and gave a barrage of half-panicked laughter "Show me, do anything to me, I don't know how this works - fuck me, Erik, anything-”

Erik grinned at him and bit down on Charles swollen lower lip. The other man groaned and Erik let go with deliberate slowness before whispering, "We'll take it carefully. Tell me what feels right."

Charles kissed him again in answer. And then it was a rush for belts and buttons, and Erik was shoving down Charles’ brand new trousers and he discovered that Charles had neglected to buy new underwear, and that was so damn hot in its simplicity. His hand went straight to Charles' growing cock, and the noise Charles made was so joyous that he couldn't believe he had ever survived living alone for so long. 

"Bed?" Charles suggested. They were half falling off the couch.

"Definitely," Erik agreed. 

Charles tried to clamber to his feet, but his trousers were around his thighs and while he was grimacing and trying to untangle them enough to pull them up, Erik decided there was no time for that. He bent and grabbed Charles' legs, sweeping him up over his shoulder in a foreman’s lift. Charles squawked, and then started laughing again, and cried "Watch it, watch it!" as they reached the doorway to the bedroom, but they made it through without any fresh bruises. 

Erik threw Charles down on the bed, and then climbed on top of him, kissing a route up the side of his neck to the curve of his cheek and then across to his mouth. 

Charles was unpicking the buttons of Erik’s shirt and then realizing they didn’t go all the way down and pulling the tails out, rucking the material up to Erik’s shoulder blades to scratch tender lines across the back of Erik’s ribcage. Erik was throbbing, thinking of burying himself in Charles’ mouth, in his arse, but he was also acutely aware that Charles was a stranger even unto himself and maybe wasn’t even in his right mind. Maybe he was just a fracture in Erik’s desperate solitude come to life because he had never wanted someone like this, like finding light after a life of blindness. Like he wasn’t even aware of how much he needed it until he parted his mouth from Charles’ skin.

He wriggled down to strip the pants off Charles fully, throwing them inside-out onto the floor. He rubbed a hot palm up the side of Charles’ ribs as he took him in his mouth, rubbing himself in sync as he licked long strips up Charles’ cock. The noises Charles made, the wordless mumbles and the shivering gasps, had him coming into his own fist in minutes. Boneless, he had to prop himself on one elbow to finish Charles off, sloppily and gracelessly, and then crawled across scattered blankets to collapse beside him. Their skin was too fevered to touch just yet, so they lay cooling down in hitches like nets lowered into the sea.

\---

The wind roared across the roof and hammered against the shutters. Erik was tracing the trail of hair down Charles’ chest. He leaned in to pin one nipple between his teeth, lightly tugging until he felt Charles’ hand in his hair. He rested his chin on the stretched skin above his beating heart, watching Charles watch him in return. There were scratches here, he noticed. Thin scratches that looked like they might have drawn blood and were now crusted over. Had he done that? He hadn’t exactly been rough. And they looked days old.

“Erik,” Charles said quietly. “When you saw those two agents, why did you want to kill them?”

Erik said instantly, a rush of denial, “I didn’t. Why would I—”

“I could… something in your body language,” Charles parted the hair on Erik’s forehead with slow strokes of his fingers, and when Erik started to swear he added, “They couldn’t tell. No one but me could tell. But why? What did you do that you were afraid of them?”

“I wasn’t,” Erik turned his head to rest his cheek on Charles’ chest. “It’s in the past.”

“I want to know,” Charles said, and Erik thought _no you don’t_ , but Charles insisted, “I don’t care what it was.”

Erik pressed his lips together, but his mind felt like it was bathing in warm milk, and nothing could go wrong when things were so smooth. “When I was fourteen,” he faltered, “my mother was murdered. It happened right in front of my eyes. It was in the war, and so many… murderers got free. I spent most of my adult life correcting that oversight. Three years ago I found the man who killed her,” he heard a stammer in his voice, like he was a child again, and felt the crush of Shaw’s face beneath the pillow, of how _Herr Doctor_ had thrashed in his half-asleep, half-dead state before finally going still. He remembered the haze of victorious glory like a drug-dream as he left the boat before any of Shaw’s cronies even knew what had happened, a haze that had taken many weeks to finally lift. “The police brought me in for questioning, but they brought a lot of people in. They didn’t have much reason to suspect me, so they let me go. I wandered for a while and then came here. Bought _Anya_ and learned to fish. That’s all there is to me.”

“There’s so much more,” Charles murmured. And then, “do you feel… anything? Any guilt?”

“No. I feel weightless. Complete.”

He heard Charles turned his head away, and looked at him. “I told you, you didn’t want to know.”

“I can’t condone…”

“It was my right,” Erik said sharply. “He was never brought to justice, otherwise. If anything, I was kinder than he deserved.”

Charles rubbed the curve of Erik’s ear between his thumb and forefinger, his face troubled but his eyes calm. 

“Let’s not talk about it. Let’s just get to sleep. I’m glad you told me.”


	4. Chapter 4

Men burning planets coalescing from the dust of the child-universe meteors crashing cold air cold water oil burning on the surface above him holding his breath forever and ever and—

Erik awoke and sucked in air until his lungs ached. He rolled over just as Charles awoke beside him, his limbs jerking once and then curling himself inwards as he opened his eyes. 

“You alright?” Erik asked. The curtains were open a little, and he could see a glint of sweat on Charles’ face. One or both of them had thrown half the quilt and the woolen blankets off in their sleep. Erik sat up to pull them back into place, tucking the corners around Charles’ body. Sleeping naked was romantic but not, when you lived on the edge of a windswept ocean in a house with no internal heating, particularly practical.

“I was dreaming,” Charles murmured, not stretching from his foetal position, his pupils blown huge, “of oil burning on the water above me.”

Erik wriggled back down under the covers. “So was I.”

Charles snapped alert like a lightswitch. He rolled onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. “What?”

“Oil on water. Burning men,” Erik rubbed the heel of his hand across his forehead. “I guess that stuff the cop was saying about a schooner getting blown up triggered it…”

Charles massaged his temples. “I guess,” he whispered, and crawled close up against Erik’s side. 

\---

He needed to do a fishing trip today, or the plant would start having words with him. He had plenty of savings in the bank but that didn’t mean he wanted to lose his contract. And a shopping trip too – the house needed groceries, milk and eggs, flour and yeast for the bread Erik baked on his days off, toilet paper and laundry soap powder. He’d have to get twice as much as usual, even if… well, he didn’t know how long Charles would be here, did he? So he should get twice as much as usual. Perhaps he should think about getting chickens, so the eggs would always be fresh.

He got up just after dawn, dressed in the dark and left Charles sleeping, given that his last trip on the ocean had been so nausea-inducing. Erik looked back only once as he maneuvered _Anya_ towards the mouth of the cove. Charles was out of bed and standing on the stony beach with the quilt wrapped around his shoulders. Erik couldn’t help grinning to himself. He was coming home to that. 

The sea was unusually calm. Erik’s best net had gaping holes where he’d cut Charles out of its tangles, but he had the spare. He’d have to shell out for a new one. Never mind. Never mind anything, what was there to worry about on a day as fine and beautiful as this?

He was far from the coast, but he could just get the faint crackle of the shipping news. Another storm, worse than the last, was building somewhere out beyond the horizon and would crash against the land early in the evening. The nets weren’t full, but Erik decided to pack it in early so he could finish the shopping and have plenty of time to get back to the cottage.

He showered the worst of the fish smell once he was back at the plant, changed his clothes and headed up to the tiny supermarket that stood at the top of the main street. The roads were quiet and the aisles of the store were near empty. Erik thought regretfully that people were moving on these days. The town would probably die in their wake. 

He was barely a block away from the docks when he realized he was being followed. He slowed down, pretending to look at something in the nearest shop window, and out of the corner of his eye risked a glance back along the street. Sure enough, two men were close behind, and it looked like they were slowing down. Waiting for him to take the lead. 

He turned towards them. “You boys new in town? You look lost.”

The men quickened their pace, and one of them raised their hand. “Yeah, we sure are!” he said. His accent was not local; it sounded homogenous, something from a big city with a lot of taxis. Both the men were in suits and judging by their neatly parted hair and bland ties they could have been government, but neither was the CIA agent from the day before. 

Erik gripped his shopping bags and pushed out his feelers for the tin cans inside. He could crush a man’s skull if he put enough force behind one of them. The men walked right up to him, their expressions unthreatening but not easily readable, either. 

“You’re Erik Lehnsherr, right?” the one who hadn’t spoken yet asked with an unconvincing smile. “You pulled that guy out of the ocean a couple of days ago?”

“Yeah,” Erik shrugged. 

“His family has finally reported him missing. Where can we find him?” the other asked. Erik couldn’t pinpoint any distinguishing features between them, even from this close.

“I put him on a bus this morning,” he rumbled. “He had an address in his pocket, something on the East coast. He didn’t want to hang around in this dump.”

“Obviously,” the first man said.

“Can we have a word?” asked the other.

“I’m kind of in a hurry,” Erik narrowed his eyes at them and turned to walk away. Before he’d got two steps, however, four hands grabbed his arms and steered him into the nearest alley. “Hey!” Erik strained against them, his fingers slipping as he struggled. The shopping bag with the cans clattered to the ground, breaking open to spill its contents into the greasy puddles. Erik was hauled through an unmarked door into the back workshop of the local mechanic’s. 

There was a tubby man with a cigarette leaning over an open engine with a spare gasket in his hands. He gaped at the trio, and one of the suited men barked, “Get out of here, and lock the door behind you! This is government business, I have the authority to arrest you for obstructing justice!”

The mechanic’s cigarette dropped out of his mouth and set a patch of oil on the floor alight. He stomped it out quickly, dropped the gasket to the ground and fled. The suits slammed Erik face-down over the workbench, the metal slab giving a dull clang that made the tools on its surface rattle. Erik thought of Shaw’s operating table and leather straps. His blood was beginning to boil.

One of the men held his arms pinned by his side while the other pressed his hand down on Erik’s head, grinding the side of his skull into the workbench. 

“You live a few miles round the coast, right?” the man holding his head down asked. “Albatross Cove. No proper roads there. Convenient place to hole up if a man wanted to stay off the radar. You looking to stay off the radar, Erik? Don’t want questions brought up about some dead fellow, went by the name of Sebastian Shaw? Remember him?”

Erik didn’t answer. He was breathing heavily through his nose, his mouth a hard line. He could kill them in a second, both of them, but that wasn’t exactly _staying off the radar_ either. 

“You get one chance to tell us of your own volition, handsome. Where’s Charles Xavier?”

Erik sneered. “I don’t know any Charles Xavier.”

“Really?” the man with his hand on Erik’s head bent his face right down to look him in the eye. “He had his address in his pocket, right? That’s funny, because I recall we took all his clothes before we handcuffed him in the hold. People are less likely to make foolish escape attempts when they’re naked, you know,” he pressed Erik’s head harder into the bench, perhaps not noticing that it was denting considerably more than any human strength should have been capable of. “It’s amazing how a little dose of humiliation can be so much more effective than physical violence. But,” he straightened up, releasing Erik’s hair, “in this case.”

“Are you insane?” Erik snarled, rage churning under his skin. How could they—how dare they— monsters, the world was full of monsters, there had been men like this in the camps but no matter how many he took down there were new beasts to take their place. “How could you do that to someone?”

“You think that was too much?” The suit bared his teeth at Erik. “That little shit murdered half a dozen of our colleagues, handsome, so evidently it wasn’t enough. We won’t make that mistake again.”

“Who are you?” Erik’s instincts told him to lift every nut and bolt in this workshop and send the shrapnel flying through the air to shred both this fuckers like grated cheese, but if he killed them there would be trouble, he knew it. There would be investigations and cops and Erik had been so content to just sit on the ocean in this sleepy little town. There had to be another way out.

“We’re with the department,” the suit pinning his arms said.

“What department?”

“That’s classified.”

His partner had picked up a pair of heavy duty pliers and was weighing them in his palm. “Is Xavier within four-point-seven miles?”

“Why the fuck would I tell you that?” Erik hissed.

“You better hope he is,” the man approached in small steps. “That’s his range, you know. If he’s that close he should hear you screaming.”

“What the fuck—”

The man bent down to look at him again. “And I’m willing to bet he likes you. Since you’re going to this much trouble for him. He’s very loyal, you know. Very caring, especially when someone he likes gets hurt,” he patted Erik’s cheek, “and he’s a queer too. When this is over you should give him the glad-eye, I bet he’d blow a good-looking fellow like you before we pick him up. Call it my little treat.”

“Fuck you,” Erik heaved his shoulders, but the suit behind him twisted his arm until it felt like he would dislocate it. The one with the pliers grabbed his chin and dug two fingers into Erik’s lower lip.

“Open up, handsome. Come on, you got teeth to spare, and better this than your fingers.”

 _Now! Do it NOW!_ Erik’s brain screamed. He gritted his teeth together and extended his perception into the tools and the car chassis, the metal light shades and the jars of nails and screws lined up on the far wall. He could hear a faint drone as they responded and began to vibrate, shifting like a thousand compass needles towards him. But before he let the metal loose, a new voice broke across the workshop. 

“Stop, both of you! What the hell are you doing?”

The suit with the pliers raised his head, and Erik managed to twist around to look. Standing in the doorway, with the mechanic just behind him, was Levene, one of the two CIA agents who had been asking questions a couple of days before. He gaped at the scene in front of him. “You two said you were from the Bureau! You can’t treat civilians like that!”

The man twisting Erik’s arm behind his back growled, “Get out of here, kid. This goes way above your head.”

“No way does that make it legal,” Levene reached into his jacket, showing off his holster. “Step away from him.”

The suit with the pliers dropped them beside Erik’s head. He stepped back from the bench, and in one swift move drew his own handgun and fired. It was the mechanic who cried out. Levene staggered back silently, blinking at the suit, and then slumped against the doorframe with his hand on his chest.

Erik jerked his untwisted arm free and shoved himself back from the table, despite the shock of pain from his shoulder, overbalancing the suit holding onto him. He hooked his foot behind the man’s leg and threw him backwards, spinning out of his loosened grasp. The suit hit the ground hard. Erik gave a vicious kick to the man’s jaw as he bolted for the door, feeling a rush of smug triumph that he was a match for these bastards despite not using his powers. The mechanic had made a run for it, but Levene was still standing in his way. Erik ducked and grabbed the agent’s arm, pulling it around his shoulders to help him and kicking the door closed behind him just as a second bullet buried itself in the doorframe.

With the injured man staggering heavily, they made slow progress down the hall and into the toolshop at the front of the mechanic’s. The second agent – Erik vaguely remembered her name was McLeod, or MacTaggert, that was it – rushed out of the back office. “Levene! What the hell happened?”

Erik transferred the injured agent to his partner and jabbed his finger at the door. “Run! Get him to the hospital!”

For a moment he thought she would refuse, or argue something about it being her responsibility to stay, but then Levene gave a low groan of pain and she pulled him away. The bell over the door tinkled cheerily as they left. 

Behind Erik, a gun went off.

If he’d seen it coming – if he hadn’t been stupid enough to turn his back on his enemy, but dammit, he’d been a fisherman for three years, he was a little out of shape – he could have deflected it, he was sure of it. Even at this range. But he didn’t see it coming, and was only aware he’d been hit because of what felt like a heavy blow to the side that spun him around. 

The suit who’d been holding the pliers was standing in the doorway, his gun raised. Erik lifted his arms and every tool in the shop began to rattle; trays of screwdrivers, racks of hammers, walls of spare car parts and household hinges and screws and doorknobs, even the friendly customer bell, all coming alive under Erik’s call. The suit glanced around with a frown. Erik gritted his teeth and threw his hands forward, launching a hundred metal missiles at the man. Pain blossomed like an explosion on the left side of his ribs. 

By some incredible instinct or luck, the suit had dropped to the floor at the last moment. The tools clattered down on him and buried themselves in the walls and carpet behind him, but Erik didn’t pause to see if he’d been hurt. He turned and slammed open the front door of the shop.

His only thoughts were _get to the cottage. Get to the cottage and protect Charles. Get to the cottage._

Above him, the thunder rumbled through the clouds and it began to rain.

\---

Erik screamed. He was sitting on the floor of the helm, _Anya_ pointed along the coast and moving at her top speed, which being a fishing boat was sadly unimpressive. Lightening crashed into the sea a few miles away and the rumble echoed his scream. He took a breath and set his teeth against each other as he pinched his fingers over the wound in his side and felt for the bullet again with his powers. It had shattered against his ribs, but he didn’t think it had penetrated any further. His body must have repelled it after all, unconsciously magnetized against attack. He’d retrieved a couple of tiny shrapnel shards, but the largest pieces of the bullet were still inside, and by the pain in his chest he’d bet they were lodged between the bones there. 

He began to pull the metal again with his mind, gently, trying to make it follow the same path it had entered. His real fear was that shreds of his clothes had been driven into the wound too, because that meant sepsis, that meant hospitalization for sure, that meant dying in a fevered agony as his body was eaten away by bacteria. He couldn’t think about that yet. He’d think about it when he got to the cottage. He took a deep breath – the wound shrieked pain like a violin crescendo – and as he let it out smoothly, he pulled the last shards of the bullet into his fingers.

He felt time shift around him and raised his head to Anya being swept sideways by the waves. He gasped and locked his mind back down on her metal hull, pulling himself to his feet to figure out how far off course he was. He must have passed out for several minutes. He grabbed for a thick pad of gauze from the scattered first aid kit on the floor and stuffed it between his wound and his shirt, then zipped up his jacket to the neck to keep it in place. He hauled on the wheel and pulled _Anya_ around until she was facing the coast. 

On one side Erik could see the lighthouse down the way, but it was far too close. He’d overshot the cove. He grimaced and pulled _Anya_ further around, only to misjudge the angle of the wave. The boat rolled dangerously and finally righted. Erik’s stomach heaved, but he thought he knew where he was now. 

The problem was that approaching from his angle was dangerous – the headland on this side had a long outspur of rocks that were just barely covered at high tide. It had to be close to high right now, but _Anya_ was way too low in the water to get over those rocks. Erik had to keep her out to sea until they were definitely past the danger, and then swing her right around to enter the mouth of the cove. In this weather, at speed, that wasn’t going to be easy. And even if he got her in, he somehow had to row the dinghy all the way to the beach with this damn hole in his side. It was going to be hell.

And it was only getting worse. As the features of the land materialized out of the rain and Erik began to calculate his approach, he saw a hard yellow ball of light in the distance. As it got closer, the little red and green dots of the boat’s port and starboard lights rising and falling with the waves, he realized it was a small motorboat, probably a runabout with a covered helm. Someone else was heading for the cove.

It was them – the suits. It had to be. Erik gave a snarl of fury and pushed his metal-bending into _Anya’s_ hull with all the strength he had. 

Too late, he realized he hadn’t given the rocks enough leeway. He was heading straight for them. But if he changed his angle it would slow him down. The suits were still well behind in the race, but they might reach the cove before him. 

It took him only a second to figure it out. He already felt fused with _Anya_ , through and through, muscles and steel. If he put all his concentration and anger behind it, he should be able to lift her above the water just long enough to get over the rocks.

Should be able to.

He gripped the wheel and focused his gaze on the pounding waves. He could see the spray rising white above the invisible rocks. He pushed his consciousness right into the metal, his lips drawn back from his teeth, and felt the weight of _Anya_ with his powers. It was like taking hold of a truck with his bare hands. But he wasn’t thinking about what was possible, only about what he had to do.

And somehow, Charles’ voice was next to him. _Calm your mind. Focus._. 

There was a touch inside his head, like a cool hand on fevered skin. 

_The anger’s not enough. Pull it back. I’ll help. You can do this._

He felt his rage and pain dissolve like salt, felt _Anya’s_ metal shiver under his will, and then he pulled her up and carried her, several tons of her, his loyal vessel, over the rocks.

It wasn’t enough. There was the scream of steel against jagged stone and Erik cried out as he felt _Anya_ wrenched open along her belly from keel to stern. She crashed back down into the water on the far side, nose dipping right into the waves for a moment. When she righted, she was leaning heavily on the damaged side, turning towards the rocky wall of the cove. Erik heaved on the wheel, but she responded sluggishly, and then not at all. Water must be pouring into the hull at an enormous rate. It was too late to head for the beach. He had to launch the dinghy now and hope he could make it from this distance. He tried to turn _Anya_ with his powers, but she was too heavy and he was too exhausted.

He scrambled out of the cabin, grabbing a lifejacket and strapping himself into it as fast as he could. His fingers had lost circulation from gripping the wheel and they fumbled at the clips. His ribs ached. He skidded across the leaning deck, slipping and hanging off the rail as he went. The net pulley swung above his head as if _Anya_ was in death throes. As Erik reached the dinghy hanging off the back of the boat, she hit the wall of the cove with another almighty screech.

Everything on the boat was shunted forward like a train had hit it at full speed. Erik clung onto the railing only with the help of his powers, and the metal bar bent like taffy under his grip. _Anya_ was almost entirely on her side now, being buffeted against the rocks again and again by the pounding waves. One of the pulleys holding the dingy released and the small boat vanished into the sea below. Erik roared in frustration.

 _Lift yourself!_ Charles’ voice cried into his mind, _Carry yourself to safety! Use your powers, do it!_

“I can’t—” Erik groaned, locking his elbows over the railing. The deck was almost vertical now, and the rocks below gnashed against the water. “I’ve never—”

 _DO IT NOW OR YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!_ Charles bellowed.

Erik set his feet against the wall the deck had become, let go of the railing and pushed off with his legs at the same time. His mind caught up the buttons and buckles on his clothes, and even the iron in his blood. He shot clumsily over the rocks and the debris. The rain soaked his face and hair. His hands reached out for the grass at the top of the low cliff that overhung the water. He wasn’t going to make it, he was going to fall, he was flying and this wasn’t possible-

He hit the grass hard and the air was pushed out of his lungs. Fresh bursts of raw pain turned his vision into black bursts and he felt himself sliding back towards the cliff. He dug his hands into the grass, into the dirt, and locked himself down.

He’d made it.

He gave himself scant seconds to recover. He was alive. His side hurt worse than ever, worse than death, but he was alive. With enormous effort, he pushed himself to his feet, staying low and hugging the sloping ground so that the wind couldn’t shove him back over the cliff. It was less than twenty inches from his back foot.

He raised his head and focused his eyes on the beach and the cottage below. Hunched over, clutching his side with both hands, he began to run.

As he slipped and staggered down the slope towards the cottage, he looked out to sea and saw the motorboat entering the cove at a cautious creep. They must have seen the trouble that he’d got into and decided to watch for rocks. That gave him time. He looked back towards the cottage.

It was less than fifty feet away now. Through the sheets of rain and the dizziness washing over him, he saw the door thrown open and the shape of Charles standing on the threshold, illuminated by the warm light behind him. He sprinted out onto the path and reached Erik in a few seconds, pulling Erik’s arm over his shoulders and supporting him back to the cottage. Erik’s legs could barely hold himself up, and he was hanging off Charles as they reached the doorway and staggered through it. Charles let go of him long enough to pull the front door closed and Erik collapsed onto the floor, a pool of water forming around him.

“Erik!” Charles rolled him onto his good side, hands grabbing at the straps of the lifejacket and pulling it off. “Christ, fuck, Erik, what have you done…”

“They’re coming,” Erik mumbled through cold-numbed lips. He wondered distantly how much blood he’d lost. “They’re coming to take you.”

“Never mind them,” Charles grabbed his face and turned it up to look at him. Erik smiled through the haze of his pain. Beautiful. “Supplies?”’

“Bandages and iodine in,” Erik sucked in a deep breath. The pain in his ribs was beyond anything he had ever felt, even under Shaw’s hands. Breathing was becoming substantially harder, “in the bathroom. Under the sink.”

He swung in and out of consciousness as Charles disappeared and returned with a box of medical supplies. The first thing he pulled out was scissors, stripping Erik of the left side of his jacket and then cutting away the shirt around the wound. Erik thought faintly, _I hope he was a doctor in his other life_ as Charles put a folded wad of sterile bandages over the wound. “Hold this,” he demanded, and when Erik didn’t move he grabbed Erik’s hands and pressed them to the wound. “Hold them, dammit.”

He got up again and went to the armchair, picking up the mustard-coloured afghan and draping it over Erik. He knelt again, right down to look at Erik’s face. “I’ll be back in a moment. They’ve reached the beach.”

He didn’t wonder how Charles knew, but for a moment the rush of adrenaline that followed Charles’ statement threw Erik’s mind back into consciousness. “Wait,” he managed to grab Charles’ wrist as he started to stand up. “Shotgun… under the stairs,” breathing was definitely getting very hard now, “in a lockbox. Key’s in drawer… by the kitchen sink… shells are… I don’t fucking know, I’ve never fired it…”

“I don’t need a shotgun,” Charles said firmly.

“They’ve got guns!”

“Then they should be all the more afraid of me,” Charles responded, crouching down again. He took Erik’s face and kissed him quickly. “You don’t need to protect me, Erik. You never did. Stay there and don’t die before I get back.”

There was a rush of cold air and the spray of rain as he opened the door, and then it was clicking closed and he was gone.

Erik lay, bleeding and dripping, for what felt like the age of the earth. He strained to listen against the rattle of the rain on the roof. He listened for a gunshot, for raised voices, for Charles’ screams. There was nothing but the rain. 

And then he heard footsteps on the threshold. The door swung open. Charles came in and shut it behind him. His face was pale, but not afraid. He knelt by Erik’s head.

Erik rasped, “Heard your voice. Helped me get over the rocks.”

“I know,” Charles said, picking up the iodine bottle and tipping it onto a fresh cloth from the medical kit. 

“I think I flew.”

“I know. This is going to hurt,” Charles said, lifting up the wad of blood-soaked bandages covering the wound. He began to wipe the iodine onto it gently. Erik hissed and Charles paused, saying faintly, “there’s air coming out.”

Erik didn’t know what that meant. “They said you killed people.”

“Yes, I think I did.”

“Did you… kill those men? On the beach, just now?” Erik asked.

“They killed themselves,” Charles said, now rooting through the medical box. “Do you have a catheter? A sterile pipe? A needle, anything? Erik, stay awake!”

“I can’t,” Erik gasped, “breathe.”

_“Erik!”_

There wasn’t any more memory after that. 

\---

Erik awoke to sunlight and pain. He turned his head. It felt heavier than _Anya_ had been when he’d lifted her out of the water. Charles was asleep on the bed next to him, curled up on top of the blankets with his knuckles resting against Erik’s neck. Erik tried to speak, but he must have fallen asleep before he could find the words.

Time came in snatches after that. Charles forcing him to drink and eat a little bread smothered in honey. Charles checking the wound, adjusting a short pipe that protruded from it. Charles helping him get up enough to piss into a bucket; reaching the outhouse was out of the question. Charles sitting in a chair beside his bed reading _A High Wind in Jamaica_. Charles giving him six expired codeine at a time from the bottle in the medical kit. 

“What day is it?” Erik asked, when his voice came back. 

“Saturday,” Charles said, putting the back of his hand to Erik’s forehead. The day of the suits and the mad race home had been Thursday. 

“Am I going to live?” Erik mumbled.

Charles chewed on the inside of his cheek. “You had a punctured lung, I think from a fractured rib that must have been crushed in when you landed on the top of the cliff. I used the tube from a ballpoint pen to release the pressure of air trapped into your chest cavity. I think it’s started to seal itself over. I’m not a doctor, but septicemia is probably our biggest worry now.”

“Not a doctor? You sure about that?” Erik smiled. He reached up to brush his fingers against Charles’ cheek, and the man held it there with his own hand. 

“Some of my memory is coming back,” he explained. “Bits and pieces… my parents are dead, I’m sure of that. I have a house in North Salem. I can read minds.”

Erik stared at him. After a long silence he wheezed, “They were your dreams.”

“Yes,” Charles’ hand tightened over his. His cheeks were burning now.

“All this time…?”

“I tried not to listen to your thoughts. I’ll keep it under control,” Charles said in a rush. “But that’s how I knew about your… your thing, with metal. It’s how I spoke to you when you were coming into the cove.”

Erik said at last, “Are you going to leave?”

“Only if you want me to.”

“I don’t,” Erik said at once. “But the blonde girl…”

“My sister. She’s my sister.”

“She’ll be looking for you.”

Charles said nothing. Erik couldn’t read his mind. He finally asked, “Won’t she?”

“The memory of me saying goodbye to her outside a school,” Charles said quietly. “It was faked. I planted there – I can do that, I can change memories. A bit. I took my own memories away and put that one in their place. I didn’t want to remember.”

“Remember what?”

Charles blinked furiously, a sheen coming over his eyes. “I killed all those men. I made the submarine blow up the boat. They were… taking me away… they were trained to resist my telepathy. The boat was a way to keep me out of range of other people, so I couldn’t summon help. But they didn’t know the submarine would pass so close to us.”

Erik rubbed his thumb across Charles’ cheek. “You were defending yourself.”

“It was revenge,” Charles answered. “I know that now.”

Erik figured it out, then. He didn’t say it, but Charles must have lifted it from his mind, because he said, “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She was trying to save me,” Charles whispered. “But they caught her. And they… they threw her… she couldn’t swim that well, and we were so far from the coast… and I… I could hear her thoughts as she…”

“Make yourself forget,” Erik said, gripping Charles’ face. “Make the memory go away, like you did before.”

“No,” Charles took his hand and placed it back on the bed. “No more quick fixes.”

He jumped suddenly, and put two fingers to his temple. “Someone’s coming. From inland, not from the sea.”

Erik didn’t have the strength to sit up, but he raised his head to watch Charles hurry out into the next room and snatch up the shotgun, which was leaning beside the door. He disappeared out into the windy, grey sunlight. 

Erik gripped the sheets, trying to follow the metal of the shotgun. He could feel that it wasn’t loaded, which meant Charles was just using it for show. He hoped even that wasn’t needed. 

A few minutes later, he felt the metal coming back. There was the low hum of voices outside, and then Charles opened the door and crossed to the small table in the far corner where Erik could see him, putting the shotgun down. A moment later a woman in a long yellow parka appeared, carrying two large canvas bags under her arms. Erik could only see the back of her head, and then she turned and her eyes widened as she saw him. He repressed his surprise in return; it was Agent MacTaggert. She hurried through into the bedroom, with Charles close on her heels.

“She’s brought supplies,” Charles explained, sounding faintly shocked. “Antibiotics and loads of other stuff.”

“One of the locals saw you staggering bloodied onto your boat,” MacTaggert explained, moving around the bed to look at Erik’s wound. “I figured you’d need it.”

“What are you doing here?” Erik snarled as she began to unwind his bandages. 

“The village is crawling with police and CIA,” she said briskly. “I knew you couldn’t come in to get food or anything. They think you’re long gone, but I volunteered to check your house to make sure. I’ve got a camera – I’ll take pictures of your wrecked boat and tell them this place is undisturbed. Hopefully they’ll buy the story that you died of your wounds or drowned.”

“Why?” Erik insisted, hissing as she lifted the gauze away from the gunshot. “Why would you do that?”

“You tried to save my partner,” MacTaggert said, not meeting his eye.

“Tried?” Erik asked. He glanced at Charles, who nodded at him. His heart sunk. He hadn’t even known the guy, but he didn’t want any more deaths on his or Charles’ account. 

Moira stayed long enough for a cup of tea and to explain the specifics of the antibiotics to Charles. Once she was gone, Charles came back to give Erik one of the fresh apples she’d brought. 

“We’ve got supplies to last a month at least,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and smiling faintly at Erik. “We can hide here until you’re well enough to travel.”

“Others will come to clear the cottage,” Erik said. 

“I can turn them away,” Charles tapped the side of his head. 

Erik’s hand was shaking as he put it over Charles’. “You don’t have to do all this. You’ve known me four days. Two of which I was mostly unconscious for.”

“And you knew me not at all when you carried me in here,” Charles said quietly. “And we both thought we were alone. But we’re not.”

Erik squeezed his hand. “Not anymore.” 

\---

The sun was burning down like a furnace by the time Jack reached the marina. He could feel the heat right through his cork sandals. He pulled out his already soaked handkerchief and scraped a layer of sweat from his brow. There were two men at the end of Pier D, one looking out through the forest of masts and one sitting with his feet over the water. 

“Hi there,” Jack grunted as he approached them. The standing man turned quickly, a smile lighting up his face. He was in an aloha shirt so cheerfully coloured that it made Jack wince. He held out his hand. “Are you Charles?”

“Indeed I am,” he shook Jack’s hand enthusiastically. There was a fancy accent in there from across the Atlantic. He gestured to his friend. “This is my brother-in-law, Erik.”

“Yuh-huh. So you two are serious about buying this ketch?” Jack tapped out a cigarette and offered one to Charles, who waved it away. “You have much experience with yachts?” 

“Erik is very good with boats,” Charles nodded surely, sticking his hands in his pockets. He poked his companion in the back with his toe. “Aren’t you?”

“I was a fisherman,” the reticent Erik grumbled. Jack liked him little better, though at least he had a bit of stubble on his chin. 

“Was?” Jack asked.

Erik wrinkled his nose. “Got drafted. Looking for new business.”

“You were in the war?” Jack raised his eyebrows. “Why’d they send you home?”

Erik lifted the corner of his shirt to show a fresh, thick bandage taped to the side of his ribs. “Outside Saigon,” he said, by way of explanation. 

Jack shrugged. “Alright, I gotta salute you for that.” 

He showed them round the boat, Charles tenderly helping Erik up and down the stairs and watching him carefully as he walked around the railing. Erik complained that there “Wasn’t much metal in the hull,” for some reason, but Charles insisted there was metal enough for his companions needs. Back on the pier they talked prices for a while. Jack had thought he’d make an easy overprice out of these two, the too-cheery Englishman and the muttering ex-soldier, but Charles was surprisingly astute and quickly beat him down to far less than even the offer Jack’s nephew had turned down last week. When it was settled, Charles shook his hand until it felt like it would fall off, and promised to have the cash to him as soon as possible.

“No cheque, I’m afraid,” Charles sighed, and Jack could _hear_ the stupid British spelling in his voice. “We’re just switching banks.”

“I’ll knock another hundred off if you get it to me tomorrow,” Jack said, and then regretted it when Charles agreed without hesitation. 

“What will you do next?” he asked. “With the ketch, I mean. It’s not a fishing boat.”

Charles smiled up at Erik. “What do you think? See if we can charter tourists in the Bahamas? Head down the coast to Honduras? Or right through Panana into the Pacific?”

“Let’s stick to getting out of the port for now,” Erik frowned, putting his arm around him. “Focus on getting you seaworthy.”

“Getting me seaworthy? Getting you whole, you mean,” Charles laughed, throwing his arm around Erik’s waist. 

Well, Jack thought, it was good to see brothers-in-law getting along well. Jack himself hated his wife’s stuck-up family. He finally managed a smile, since these two were going to give him a whole lot of cash tomorrow. 

“Are you going to rename her?” he asked, pulling out his handkerchief again. “I know a guy who will do a new paint job for cheaper than you’ll get anywhere.” 

The two buyers looked at each other, Charles smiling warmly, but it was Erik who spoke. “What do you think?”

“You know what I think,” Charles said. “I don’t even have to send it to you.”

“Raven,” Erik said, and Charles nodded.

“We don’t really have any other names to give, do we, Erik?”

“No we don’t,” Erik agreed. He looked up at Jack as if he’d forgotten he was still standing there. “We should go.” 

“Good luck to you both,” Jack called as they walked away down the pier, Erik going slowly and with obvious pain. But the man simply raised a hand to him without replying. Jack watched them until they rounded the corner and were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much everyone! Concrit is welcome, especially about the ending, which I slightly extended from the original fill.


End file.
